Could COVID-19 Usher In A New Era Of Responsibility In Fashion?

If we take our collective learnings from the current crisis seriously, the dawn of a new era of community and personal responsibility is upon us. The call to action is loud for both consumers and participants in the fashion industry, given its outsized impact on the well-being of people in its labor-intensive supply chain, on the environment, and on animal welfare. As we take steps to recover and rebuild, we have an opportunity and obligation far greater than applying bandages to a flawed system. Coronavirus has brought this into stark relief—with headlines about cancelations of orders threatening further impoverishment of garment workers in Bangladesh, at least one million of whom are estimated to have been fired or furloughed with no savings—the result of subpar living-wage pay even in good years. But Bangladesh is not alone in the plight its garment workers face, and similar alarms have been sounded repeatedly for more than a century with little sustained progress. Read more at Vogue.